Government Turns to Long-Term Needs

Haiti Officials Plan to Move First 20,000 Refugees to New Camp Outside Capital; Violence Breaks Out Over Who Has Tents

By

Michael M. Phillips and Christopher Rhoads

Updated Jan. 22, 2010 12:01 a.m. ET

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti— The government here, overwhelmed in the early days of Haiti's emergency, is turning attention to longer-term care for survivors and shelter for the country's estimated one million homeless.

While the struggle continues to bury the still-countless dead and prevent the injured from dying, Haitian leaders said they hope within days to start moving 20,000 refugees in the capital to a huge new camp just outside the city to the north. There they can be given aid more easily, government officials said.

"We're moving them to another site and setting up tents," said Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue, Haiti's minister of communications. At an arid, windswept plain not far from the town of Croix des Bouquets, a United Nations bulldozer and dump truck cleared a two-acre plot of scrub brush and cactus on Thursday.

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A man gestures to a Haitian policeman during scavenging in Port-au-Prince, as tensions rose over the need for food and housing, and sporadic looting, nine days after the earthquake.
Associated Press

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More than 300,000 people are living in 280 "spontaneous settlements" in open spaces across the capital, ranging from public parks to gasoline stations, according to information received by the Pan American Health Organization, the regional arm of the World Health Organization. The organization worries that the settlements could spread diseases like typhoid.

Across the country, the challenges for the local government and the international community still seemed overwhelming nine days after the 7.0 quake flattened parts of the capital, killing what the government estimates were as many as 200,000 people.

U.S. military medical personnel labored Thursday to handle the fast flow of Haitians seeking treatment for injuries.

At an improvised field hospital at a Haitian Coast Guard base in Carrefour, a Port-au-Prince suburb, officers said evacuation helicopters weren't landing frequently or predictably enough to keep up with the hundreds of patients in need of urgent care. "My beds are overflowing," said Col. Marie Dominguez, one of three Army doctors at the facility.

There was a flurry of activity as U.S. Coast Guard helicopters picked up patients at the soccer field adjacent to the field hospital. The staff managed to evacuate 91 patients on Wednesday, but said the pace still wasn't enough to handle the 100-150 patients treated daily at the 20-bed facility. "We don't have the ability to call in medevac for critical care," said U.S. Navy Capt. Cindy Therbaud, commodore of Destroyer Squadron Six Zero. Her sailors were headed to West Africa when they were diverted to Haiti to assist in the relief effort.

A Navy senior chief petty officer, Tom Guest, was dispatched to the base's front gate Thursday afternoon to conduct rudimentary triage on the many locals seeking treatment. "Basically now it's life or limb to get in here," Chief Guest said.

Rows of injured Haitians lay on a grassy lawn awaiting evacuation, paper tags identifying them and their injuries. Many had severely broken limbs. "There are no minor injuries here," said Col. Dominguez.

Nine days after the quake, some of the dozens of international rescue teams began to fly home though search efforts still continued. The Haitian government was expected to call off the rescues soon to allow bulldozers to begin clearing the rubble from roads and ease the movement of aid. Survivors have rarely lasted longer than 10 days without food or water in other disasters.

At least one search continued Thursday night in Port-au-Prince. A father who said he heard his three-year-old son cry out the night before helped a team from Fairfax, Va., navigate digging through a five-story building to his son's bedroom.

"That's the bed," Noel Rathon told them as they deepened the hole. "That's the blanket." He said his wife had died after he dug her out days before.

After six hours, the team unplugged its electric chisels and floodlights. John Diamantes approached Mr. Rathon, 30 years old, who sat on a dirt mound by the shattered house.

"We just don't see your son in there," he said. "We were really, really hoping we could tell you something different."

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An injured child waits to be flown for treatment on the USNS Comfort.
Getty Images

The government has buried an estimated 75,000 people, most of them in mass graves in a sparsely populated area north of the capital called Titanyen.

Aid was still scarce in much of the country of 10 million. Only a fraction of the aid flights waiting to land in Haiti can get through because of overcapacity at the capital's only big airport. To help relieve the bottleneck, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration sent a portable control tower aboard a large, chartered cargo aircraft. The control tower will take about two days to assemble, the FAA said in a statement.

Some boats were able to unload supplies at a pier that was repaired in Haiti's badly damaged port, raising hopes for faster delivery in the days ahead.

NGO officials said they figured relief efforts had less than a week to get supplies running smoothly before the unrest could explode into real violence. Haiti has a history of deadly food riots, including in the spring 2008 when global food prices soared.

To boost security and aid, 3,000 U.S. soldiers were on the ground by Thursday, the U.S. said. Haiti also accepted 150 Dominican troops as U.N. peacekeeping forces, after initially turning down a larger contingent offered by its neighbor, with whom it has uneasy relations.

In Jacmel, tensions boiled over into violence Thursday when a protest over the lack of aid turned into an armed battle over donated tents.

The march, which began peacefully in front of the World Food Program office here, turned violent when it continued through another neighborhood, which had numerous recently donated tents lining the rubble-strewn streets. Some of the new owners of the tents had placed rental signs on them.

A number attacked and ripped the tents with knives as they ran down the streets, according to several eyewitnesses. Multiple protesters carried weapons, including clubs, rocks and machetes.

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Quake survivors pleaded to be admitted into the Canadian Embassy in Port-au-Prince Wednesday. Paul Jeffrey/AFP/Getty Images

"They came here to destroy what we had," said 30-year-old Benito Sylvain, who works in an auto parts shop. "So we had to defend our neighborhood."

Mr. Sylvain said he and several dozen other young men responded by throwing rocks at the attackers and using sticks, eventually driving them away after about half an hour, he said.

Andre Paul Jerome, a 36-year-old teacher who took part in the initial demonstration, said he and others made the march because they are frustrated. He said the demonstration was peaceful until trouble-makers joined it.

The donated tents were the first sign of any response in Jacmel to the plight of the survivors, where many still sit numbly in front of piles of rocks that were once their homes. The tents created an instant appearance of haves and have-nots, a shift from the sense of commonly shared suffering of the recent week.

Mr. Jerome said they were distributed by locals to their friends and connections, not necessarily by need. "It's about favoritism," he said. "So we are angry."

— Betsy McKay,Kevin Noblet and Jose de Cordoba contributed to this article.

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